Female Porn Use Isn’t a Crisis — But the Reporting On It Is
TUESDAY, November 18, 2025.
There are very few things left in society that can still produce genuine surprise.
Yet every few years, a major newspaper rediscovers—often with biblical awe—that women possess not only an inner life but a sexual one as well.
The latest entry in this recurring cycle is Lucy Denyer’s piece in The Telegraph, one of Great Britain’s big 3 of quality newspapers, in which the revelation that a woman watches pornography is presented with the startled tone usually reserved for rare meteorological phenomena.
The entire article reads like someone has just stumbled upon a secret civilization.
Apparently, women have both desire and internet access. Who knew?
Everyone, of course. Except the Feed.
The Crisis That Isn’t
There is nothing the Feed loves more than a crisis.
If it cannot find one, it simply inflate a minor, garden-variety human behavior until it resembles a public health advisory.
Suddenly, women consuming pornography—something people have been doing since the invention of boredom—becomes an “epidemic.”
When men use porn, it is a personality quirk.
When women use it, it becomes a cultural emergency requiring long-form analysis and at least one expert ghosting their graduate school advisor’s theories.
The concern is not for the women, but for the idea of womanhood: pure, tidy, and always available to represent whatever neurosis the culture requires.
This is not a crisis.
This is the Feed doing what the Feed does.
Female Desire as Breaking News
The shock here is not that a woman uses pornography. The shock is that mainstream media insists on treating it as shattering news—like the discovery of water on Mars, but less useful.
Women have been erotic beings since long before the British press learned to spell the word “erotic.”
What Denyer’s article calls a “confession” is, in reality, a mundane truth of cultural adaptation: women turn to pornography for the same reasons men do—loneliness, curiosity, distraction, emotional anesthesia, and occasionally because they are still awake and horny at 1:30 a.m.
The only people confused by this are journalists who pathologize in the Feed.
The Feed Doesn’t Want Complexity—It Wants Morality Plays
The entire genre of “female porn addiction features” follows a familiar arc:
Introduce a woman whose habits distress her.
Suggest the problem is the pornography.
Omit the part where compulsive behavior is rarely the problem and almost always the solution to one.
Conclude with the vague suggestion that society is “changing,” as though that’s ever been optional.
What’s missing—as usual—is the emotional context. Context explains most mental health queries.
Real compulsions, including pornography use, are nearly always the outcomes of attachment wounds, trauma, chronic loneliness, or what we Americans now politely call our “coping strategies.”
But these subtleties do not fit into headlines designed to alarm British readers who probably haven’t updated their understanding of human sexuality since the Suez Crisis.
Shame: The Only Real Addiction in This Story
If there’s anything truly harmful in the scenario Denyer describes, it’s the shame. It’s always the shame, isn’t it?
Perhaps shame is humanity’s most renewable energy source. We carry it like a subscription. We didn’t order it, but there it is.
The shame isn’t coming from the porn. It’s coming from the cultural demand that a woman’s sexuality must always be:
Tasteful.
Relational.
Emotionally Meaningful
And pleasing to observers who have absolutely no business being in the room.
When women violate these rules—by having desires that aren’t curated for public consumption—they are presented as cautionary tales rather than horny folks with nervous systems.
Is It Addiction? Maybe Sometimes. But Usually It’s Just Life.
“Porn addiction” has long been a popular term, largely because it is cinematic and easy to dramatize.
Researchers, however, are not nearly as enthusiastic. They argue:
It may be a compulsive behavior.
It may be an avoidance pattern.
It may be moral panic wearing a lab coat.
Or it may simply be someone trying to make it through Monday.
Here’s a Better Way to frame the Question:
What function is the behavior serving?
If it numbs, distracts, or soothes, then the porn is incidental. The underlying ache is the real issue.
But “Woman Struggles With Her Pain and Finds a Temporary Digital Distraction” would not get many clicks in the Feed, would it?
If There’s a Story Here, It’s probably the Loneliness
Denyer’s subject is not a scandal. She is a symptom. Not of an epidemic of pornography, but of a society in which emotional support is scarce, intimacy is elusive, and digital life is often an easier way to pass the time than human life.
The real headline should be:
“Woman Alone with Her Feelings Turns to Readily Available Distraction.”
But that isn’t news. Who would click on that? It’s just our current human condition in the Feed.
Final Thoughts
There is nothing remarkable about women watching pornography.
And There is nothing new about shame.
I’ll also go as far to say that there is nothing newsworthy about loneliness, though perhaps there should be.
If anything is in crisis, it is our inability to speak honestly about female sexuality without staging it as an implausible moral event.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Grubbs, J. B., Perry, S. L., Grant Weinandy, J. T., & Kraus, S. W. (2020). Porndemic? A longitudinal study of pornography use before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 49(8), 2855–2873. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-020-01790-2
Kraus, S. W., Martino, S., & Potenza, M. N. (2016). Clinical characteristics of compulsive sexual behavior among women. Journal of Behavioral Addictions, 5(2), 231–238. https://doi.org/10.1556/2006.5.2016.030
Vaillancourt-Morel, M.-P., Blais-Lecours, S., Labadie, C., Bergeron, S., Sabourin, S., & Godbout, N. (2017). Profiles of women’s pornography use and sexual well-being. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 46(8), 2425–2436. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-017-1028-0
Wéry, A., & Billieux, J. (2017). Problematic cybersex use: A systematic review of conceptualizations, theoretical frameworks, and clinical findings. Addictive Behaviors, 73, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2017.01.002